In the midst of these thoughts he heard a strained voice: “Don’t shoot!” and turned to see a scratched, red-headed officer pushing aside the rifle of his sergeant, which was aimed at Billy. They wriggled up the slope and joined him.
A third man arrived to point out a line of Turks at the foot of the next ridge, slightly northeast across the gully and only three hundred yards away. Billy had missed them — they were in the wrong direction, he hastily explained, they had only just popped up.
“I’ve been watching them for ten minutes,” said the new arrival.
Billy made a quick suggestion to redeem his pride: “Five men, five shots.” Could he do it? Talking rapidly, he described how the moments of surprise and uncertainty after the first shots would freeze the others.
And that is what happened.
When Billy fired the astonished Turks wavered and fell while the officer and the remainder of his men hurtled down the few yards to the empty Gun Pits, and leapt in, huddling together like children.
As soon as the five shots had been loosed Billy slithered out of sight. Sure enough, a ferocious succession of bullets caned the gravely lip of the ridge where he had lain moments before.
He had just killed five men, but the feeling was not the one he wanted: the pressure in his head almost caused him to cry out in rage.
Suddenly there were soldiers everywhere. A second party had arrived on the tail of the first, but half had taken a wrong turning and were now trapped on the slope under fire. Billy’s head was pounding. A rabbity corporal in panic grabbed his sleeve: “Jim and Colin are out there, what’s to be done?”
“Bugger me — can’t you see?”
Billy took six leaping strides over the edge of the ridge and dragged back one of the wounded. Then he dived out again grazing his left cheek and breathing the dust of acrid, pulverized stones whipped up from the nearby bullets while he rolled the second wounded man into the arms of a stretcher bearer.
“That was a Christian act,” said a moustached officer kneeling at Billy’s side. “I’ll remember it. What’s your name?”
For a while the men lay silently under the protection of the crest. The space they occupied was no larger than a ship’s life raft: leg intersected leg, elbow rested on knee. Then the officer said to Billy:
“Come with me.”
They crawled through the bushes and stopped about twenty yards farther along from Billy’s sniping spot. The officer rolled onto his back, tilted his head causing his neck to stretch as if for slitting, placed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. An answering call came from the Gun Pits. Then the officer risked a long look towards the Echelon trenches, ducked, and whistled again, this time piercingly and imperatively.
“It’s all over,” he said, “we can go home.”
They heard the crash of feet as the party from the Gun Pits came hopping back. This time there was no fire from the Turks because an Australian machine gun had started up, spinning tiny whirlwinds across the face of the Echelon.
“See anything?”
“Not a ripple. I’ll try the spyglass.”
“Look, Mackenzie, we can’t afford this. We’ve got to get going.”
“I’m staying,” said Billy, who was already uncapping the telescope.
“You’re mad.”
“You’ll have to carry me out.” A great plain in Billy’s mind was ablaze from end to end. Dark figures dashed everywhere in panic, their silhouettes startling against towering curtains of flame: Billy alone was steady.
“They’ll kill you.”
“I’m staying. You wait and see, I’ll be on your tail in no time.”
The officer made a last effort. He gripped Billy by the elbow and smiled condescendingly.
“Piss off,” said Billy calmly. “How do you know what my orders are? I’ve got business out here.”
Then it emerged that the man had all along wanted Billy to stay. He had felt guilty at leaving him, that was all. And the truth was that Billy would be doing the men a service by watching the rear. Already the sergeant had reported a glimpse of what he maintained was a battalion of Turks moving towards the rear of the Echelon. “I won’t forget you,” said the officer as he left, tugging a carroty lock with respect.
At last Billy was alone. He blew dust off the sights of his rifle, took out a clean slip of flannel and wiped them. He rattled a small bottle of blacking liquid from the hollowed butt, and there, in a timeless mood of care, fastidiously painted the sights, both fore and rear. He wiped the bolt and breech until not a crumb of dirt remained, then wriggled to a more protected position. Here he took out his telescope and began setting it up. Even without looking he knew the Turks were for the moment keeping hidden. The odd distant shot rang out, the machine gun from a mile back stuttered. Then a movement caught Billy’s eye.
It was a man running, coming from the left, from the Australian lines. His route took him along the gully at the base of the ridge where Billy lay. He fairly streaked, and though he occasionally stumbled on the low undergrowth these accidents seemed merely to serve as an extra source of propulsion. His final stumble turned into a dive, and he crashed into the crumbled brick embrasure forming the near side of the Gun Pits.
Billy excitedly fiddled with the telescope and focused on the trench. He was so close that the eyepiece filled with T-joints of brick where weathered mortar left dark slits. The man must have been cautiously raising himself just then because a sweat-stained shirt intruded, so Billy lifted the telescope by slightly cocking his wrist: and found himself staring not into the face of a stranger, but at the familiar wide eyes of Walter Gilchrist.
“Wally! Up here, quick!”
The Australian machine gun started again, only this time it sprayed around the mouth of the Gun Pits as well.
“Wal-lee!” Billy shouted with his mouth almost touching the ground. Bullets whipped the low shrubbery along the skyline, which was inches from his scalp; it was machine gun fire from the opposite direction, from the Turkish lines. They must have heard Billy shouting, or else seen Walter’s run: or both.
It was hopeless.
But the calm deep within Billy spread until it controlled his physical being as well. It was within his power to do something for Walter, but he hesitated.
There was a pattern to the Australian shooting. As long as the machine gun fired it was safe for Billy to raise his head. These were the very moments, though, when Walter was unable to raise his. This see-saw of opportunity seemed endless; ten minutes or half an hour passed: every now and again Billy shouted, but with little hope of being heard because no answering call came from the trench. Only once did Billy dare to raise the telescope, and saw Walter again, full face, staring straight at him like a blind man.
Billy remembered how Walter had crept up on him in their childhood games. But they had never been games to Billy. Never quite. Why had Billy never been able to understand, no matter how many times Walter explained, how it was that his name, printed BILLY on a slate, became YLLIB when held up to a mirror? Nor why the surface of water curved instead of lying flat in a full glass, nor how a piece of wire attached to a dynamo could cause a salty agitation on his tongue without any change occurring in the wire. The terrified face how held in his telescope had laughed at him for not comprehending such everyday laboratory tricks. The terrified face had once reacted just as dumbly when Billy talked about his straightforward acceptance of heaven, hell, and an invisible God that could be spoken to.
I am invisible now, thought Billy with elation. Each time the Australian guns pinned Walter down he raised his head and assessed the situation. He was able to see as far as a bend in the wall past the position where Walter cowered, his shoulders white from the storm of pulverized masonry. Billy’s duty was plain, should he choose to obey it. He could easily pot any Turk who dropped into the far end of the Gun Pits, and even if he missed he would be able to pin them down for long enough for Walter to take a chance, scramble out, and sprint for his life up the slope to safety.
But having made this plan Billy worked out a good reason for not following it. He could fire only when the Australian machine guns were firing, but the chances were bad for Walter in that case.
So, whichever way he thought of it, Walter ended a dead man. When this idea was clear in his mind Billy made an astonishing discovery. The mental agitation that had plagued him all night and throughout the morning had completely disappeared. It was as if his rage had mounted to its unbearable point of pressure and resolved itself at some moment of fury without his knowing.
When he looked at Walter again he saw a trapped hand patting the bricks. What was going on? Nothing but Walter’s hand feebly wandering, reaching high up the wall without seeing anything, just touching, smoothing the rough age-old blocks with his palm and feeling the bumps with his fingers, almost wonderingly. Billy had no time to reflect on what it was in the gesture that alerted him, that woke him up. But suddenly he knew that someone else was in the trench, and that Walter had no idea.
“Walter, Wally run!” For a second Walter dropped from sight. The firing came from everywhere but Billy ignored it. “Wally, where are you?” His voice dragged at the dry walls of his throat.
Then Billy saw them, two Turks and a German sergeant bent double moving along the trench at a speed that astonished him. By the time his sights were aligned the first man was springing at Walter with a curiously gentle leap. Billy fired — Walter rising into his sights like a runner from the blocks, like a startled kangaroo from grass — reloaded and fired again, then dropped the rifle and heedlessly consulted the telescope while Turkish marksmen sought him out. He found himself again looking into Walter’s eyes, but they were blood-soaked now and sightless. The biggest Turk abruptly slung him over his shoulder like a carcase, Walter’s arms drunkenly loose but swinging in time to the lurch of his captors as they lugged him away.
With their departure calm descended on the Balkan Gun Pits. Both sides seemed to abandon their interest in the place, and Billy, scooping up rifle and telescope, also wanted to be free of it.
21
Piano Music
The morning after receiving Ollie Melrose’s letter Frances played the piano for the first time in six months. Ugly scales echoed through the house until the keys ran slippery with sweat. In the darkened living room, where drapes were drawn against the heat, she at last felt ready to do away with the humble being she had become. And all because of a letter! She was prepared now to play something serious. But first she stepped to the window and peered into the mid-morning glare, nervous that the piece she wished to attempt — something by Mozart — was beyond her, knowing that her mother would be listening and wondering about the transformation thus signalled. She was nervous too that the mood suddenly filling her might be only a whim, and that at any moment she would find herself plunged back into the unfeeling gloom that had possessed her since Diana’s death, that had darkened even more two weeks later when Walter’s disappearance was announced in a small item at the foot of the Herald’s twenty-eighth casualty list.
Where had he gone? He was not reported dead or alive, wounded or dying, but “missing” in peculiar circumstances. Though she had stopped caring about Walter, Frances became obsessed by the spectral quality that seemed to surround his fate, as if he had been made quite special at last — uniquely beyond her grasp. Then a few weeks later his name appeared again, this time in a list of prisoners supplied through the American consul in Constantinople, and her mother had urged her to write. But instead she had dashed off a note to one of Walter’s friends, and must have said more than she intended for the reply peered straight into her soul:
“A bad conscience makes a bad friend. Send him socks and chocolate but do it under any name but your own. It’s lonely enough in Turkey at the best of times, take it from one who knows. For a man on his own, letters from a girl who ‘don’t mean it’ would be a siren call with nothing but the abyss between.”
It seemed to Frances that Ollie Melrose, who signed himself ornately as “Oliver”, whom she had never met, whose reply came from Egypt where he was convalescing from wounds, understood her better than anyone at home. Besides, he had asked her to send a photo of herself: “Just look in the right-hand drawer, in the left corner, under those gloves and handkerchiefs, etc., and you will find one.” Frances was cheered most of all by his daring to express a mixed opinion of her while still showing liking and curiosity.
But his advice went against the view of her mother, who was still urging Frances to “write and show friendship”. She could not understand how Frances was able to throw herself into Red Cross work yet ignore the plight of the one man who was not a stranger. Just yesterday she had greeted a hundred returning soldiers at Woolloomooloo and won their devotion.
“I’m giving it up,” said Frances when her mother entered the room and asked why she was not in uniform:
“I don’t understand. Mrs Brewer’s taking us in the car. Sidney will be driving.”
“I’ve finished with war work. Honestly, I’ve done my share.”
An astonished Mrs Reilly sent Helen to make tea. “I won’t talk about it,” she resolved. “I can’t!” But a moment later she said: “You were the one who took the lead. It was your enthusiasm!”
How could Frances explain that almost at the instant of Walter’s disappearance she had elected to disappear herself? But now she had been sighted, a stranger had seen her as she truly was. How remarkable! She felt alive again. “There are hordes doing it. I’m not needed. Besides, hardly anything we’ve done has reached the soldiers. It’s all piled up somewhere.”
“Is that the real reason?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what is?”
“I can’t say. I don’t even know what got me started.” But at this Mrs Reilly shook her head, because both knew how things had been in the weeks following Diana’s death, when Frances had come downstairs after days of staring at the ceiling and immersed herself in Red Cross work. Mrs Reilly had suspected all along — Harry’s notion, really — that her daughter’s energetic devotion to the cause sprang from uneasiness at her part in Diana’s fate.
“What does Harry say? ‘Quod omnia something’, we’re all touched by the war.”
“Quod omnes tangit,” Frances recited, “ab omnibus approbetur.”
“You can’t just let it drop.”
“No-one will notice.”
“They’ve just made me secretary,” Mrs Reilly complained. At this her daughter giggled, whereas only yesterday she had stood soulfully on the wharf holding a basket of wilting flowers.
“That saying of Harry’s is ridiculous,” said Frances. “Why should we approve of something just because it affects our lives?”
“He’s coming this afternoon. Please don’t start an argument.”
Frances had changed her mind about Harry, and was glad she had never been bold enough to repeat Sharon’s scandalous accusations to her mother. They were true without doubt, but under Harry’s fuzziness and querulous deceit she had found something to respect. On her arrival home after the drowning he was the only one who refused to pretend that nothing had changed. So they went on disliking each other, but with respect instead of disdain for the battle each needed to fight in silence. In that way dislike turned into something else. Frances tolerated and began to enjoy his “helping out” with the heavier Red Cross loads whenever he had the opportunity — almost continuously these past two weeks of his annual holidays.
“Do you know who Harry thinks he saw at the ship yesterday? Billy Mackenzie.”
“But we met them all.”
“Not the ones at the other end. The cases for the hospital were seen by the ladies from Vaucluse. Harry was very sure, except that Billy’s hair was close cropped and bristly. He looked like a German.”
“Wouldn’t we have heard? Why didn’t you say so before? Couldn’t you have spoken to him ?” Her mother leaned forward: “We should have sought him out.”
Frances c
hose this moment to break finally clear of the shell of grief that had enclosed her since June.
“He blames me for Diana,” she said firmly. “I know that he thinks nothing would have happened if it hadn’t been for my … my …” Frances took a sip of tea, then nibbled a biscuit, leaving her mother an awkward witness to the confirmation of her own suspicions.
“Who would think such a thing!”
“He must,” said Frances quietly, “I think it myself.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I left the door open and Diana caught cold. She would not have got pneumonia otherwise. The holiday was spoiled and I insisted on going home. But worse than that.”
“Worse?” Mrs Reilly was alarmed. All this she had thought herself, and had discussed her feelings many times with Harry. Now it seemed there was to be another revelation.
“It’s the way I am. I drew her into it.”
“Into what, for God’s sake,” breathed Mrs Reilly.
“Into life. My life. I feel as if Diana was forced to make amends because I’ll never be able to.”
“I won’t listen to —” this madness, she wanted to say.
“It’s all right, mother. I know I’m to blame, but I’ve finished worrying. I really have finished.”
“Something Oliver Melrose said made the difference, didn’t it. May I read the letter? Or was it catching sight of Billy? We’ll have to go and see him, you know.”
“I can’t change,” said Frances, raising her head in decisive resignation, “I can’t.”
Her mother took her daughter’s hand. “You’ve changed already. Today is the first time in months I’ve heard you play the piano. You’ve recovered your old self.”
“That’s what I mean.”
There they sat without talking until the doorbell clanged and Mrs Reilly leapt up in alarm because she had not yet tidied herself.
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